Hal Wilkerson
Hal Wilkerson, played by Bryan Cranston, is married to Lois, and is father to Francis, Reese, Malcolm, Dewey, and Jamie. He is more relaxed in his parenting than Lois, mainly because he is afraid to make the wrong choice. However, he does discipline his boys; most of the time when Lois is disciplining them to back her up, and sometimes even when she is not around. Several episodes refer to him as a former rebel and troublemaker, much like his sons. He is an often immature, inept man who is basically lost without Lois to keep him in line and tell him what to do. Hal was raised in a wealthy family which consists of his parents Walter and Sharon Wilkerson. Walter died in season seven, he has two sisters named Claire and Amelia, a brother in-law named Tom, and several nieces and nephews who are unnamed. Growing up, Hal had a lot of problems that his siblings didn't have. He wasn't able to get help from his father because Walter was always too busy joking around with him to be serious when Hal needed him. Against his family's wishes, he married Lois Welker, which caused friction between both families. They despised her because of both her lower background and her pushy, loudmouthed personality. They never came to visit their nephews and mistreated her at every chance they got whenever she came to visit them. It was revealed in Lois' Sister that Hal used to date Susan Welker, and his family had approved of her because she was talented and higher class. It was also shown that both families thought he was nuts for choosing Lois over Susan, which caused friction within the sisters for years. He also mentions that he almost married a Mexican girl two weeks before he married his wife. He ran a pirate radio station in college under the name of Kid Charlemagne. Despite all that, Hal blends well with his neighbors, sharing similar interests. As much as the neighbors like him, they despise Lois greatly (except for the Kenarbans) for her pushy and loud-mouthed attitude. They have also shown to hate Hal's sons for their destructive nature. The neighbors made no attempt to disguise it around them, except for Hal. This was shown a couple of times on the show. The first time was in Season 2's New Neighbors, when she, Malcolm and Reese got into a conflict with Tina, Josh and Emily, whereas Hal and Mike became best friends and were the only ones distraught over Mike's family moving away. Another time this was shown was in Season 5's Block Party, when the neighbors celebrate the annual vacation taken by Hal and his family with an over the top block party, and despite Lois' apathy, Hal provokes Lois into joining him in a kielbasa eating contest. He and Lois finish the contest in a draw, winning the hearts of their neighbors. Their rebound is short lived however, when without the family to act as scapegoats, the whole neighborhood turns on each other. The third time was in Season 7's Mono, when Hal goes to a series of parties at many of his neighbors houses, becoming the life of the party, and even being unwittingly set up with an attractive divorcee, only to discover that he was never invited before because everyone thought his wife was "A pill", and that they didn't want her around. Hal truly loves Lois, but is sorry about Susan. However, part of it was because Hal was greatly aware of Susan's outlandish vindictiveness, and bitter behavior. In Season 6's Living Will, Hal's indecisiveness stems from a childhood incident in which he accidentally caused a snake to strike a clown (as an adult he is afraid of both snakes and clowns). This explained why he always deferred to Lois in making decisions for him. When he was given the decision to decide an elderly neighbor's fate, Hal was worried he'd chose wrong and faked having Hysterical Conversion Disorder to avoid choosing. However, Lois snapped him out of it when she made him realize that he was good at making decisions once by choosing to marry her over Susan against both families' wishes, which finally helped him make a decision (not revealed on the show). Hal is not above throwing tantrums or giving into complete despair. A major example of this was when Lois's hateful mother Ida sues them, even with a new baby on the way and a hopelessly high amount of debt. While Hal put on a brave face for Lois, he then went into their car and flew into a horrendous, wailing, sobbing fit. (with Malcolm watching.) While Hal and Lois blame a lot of their misfortunes on their children, a lot of it stems from Hal's own reckless behavior and extremely poor work ethic. When Lois is away, he quickly loses self-control and indulges in his baser enjoyments, such as smoking, gambling, loud music, and building "killer robots" (as explored in one episode). Even with Lois with him, in one episode, he steals a car that was speeding up and down the street in front of his house (subsequently pushing it into a lake with her help). In another episode, Hal is seen to love domino toppling, and in the episode Bowling, he is seen as a skilled bowler, making a strike with every bowl. Hal has been revealed as a talented hairdresser. There are also hints that he has a foot fetish. He was also revealed to have an addiction to coffee, and would even drink it in the shower or french kiss Lois just to lick the coffee off her teeth. He claims that he drinks three pots a day. Although he does not show it much, he has a high temper, and usually flies into fits of rage over petty annoyances, frequently engaging in self-destructive vendettas against those who cross him. In the second-season episode Convention, when he and Lois go to a convention, he keeps getting into fist-fights with a man who stole a great idea from him long ago. Also, when a clown at a batting cage insults Lois, he immediately strikes the clown and continues to get the whole family involved when other clowns join the fray. Another example of his high temper is in the fifth-season episode Reese's Apartment, when he gets furious and starts speaking angry gibberish after hearing the horrible, outlandish thing that Reese did (which is never revealed). He is also very squeamish, and is terrified of cartoon characters like Rosie the Robot and "evil puppet" movies. Hal is very devoted to his wife Lois. He likes the fact that he is "the only one who really understands" her and believes her to be his "special treasure." He also believes that both his happiness and the well-being of his sons depend largely on her. As a result, Hal supports Lois on most things and allows her to handle disciplining the boys. However, as a man, he often understands what his sons are going through better than Lois, and helps them accordingly, sometimes behind Lois' back. For example, he drives Francis back to military school when he runs away, preventing Lois from finding and punishing him. Although he usually defers to Lois, he also knows when to disagree with her; he calms Lois down when she starts going overboard, as she tends to do, and provides a balance to her abrasive and intense personality. However, Hal and Lois's obsession with each other is also the reason why their house is in such a terrible state as put sex above all else, even their own children. Hal has sunk to some great lows throughout the show. He has stolen money from Francis to pay for paint for a mid life crisis project, and even stole Malcolm's credit card to pay for a ski trip while trying to outdo the boys on Christmas. He is also shown to be extremely cowardly. Often when he ruins something, he bribes his sons to take the fall. Hal has been shown to be criminally negligent with his children. He almost drove off with baby Jamie on the roof of the car and once said he left Dewey in Mexico. He has forgotten Dewey's birthday on several occasions. Because of this and his general incompetence as a man, his sons have extremely little to no respect for him. Because Hal is nowhere near as mean or intimidating as Lois, nor is he as smart, his sons are always quick to take advantage of him. Hal is often a pathological and compulsive liar. He also underestimates his own sons extremely, most notably Dewey and Francis. Hal fears Lois more than anything else in the world. Hal is quite passionate about a range of activities, such as roller-skating, painting, pirate radio and race walking. He also has a passion for electronics and listening to old music. He comes from a large and rich family, all members of which have various (repressed) problems. They rarely visit because of their intense friction with Lois. Hal's family believes that Hal deserved a high-class woman like Susan, instead of Lois, who has a lower-class background. His father, Walter, (Christopher Lloyd) never listened to him, and so he always made jokes or tickled Hal before they both could speak about Lois. This, however, came back to him later on when Hal prepares for battle by putting on layers of jackets for a tickle match-up with him. During that time, Walter, while Hal was tickling him, finally confessed to why he encouraged the rest of the family to continue mistreating Lois the way they do. In a seventh-season episode, Hal has a hard time grieving for his father and tried to overcompensate with gifts for the boys in an effort to make sure they would care when he died, because he felt bad that he found it so hard to get sad when his own father had passed. While Reese and Dewey took advantage of it, Malcolm realized it was wrong and tried to stop him. He was eventually successful with Lois stepping in and helping Hal grieve for his father's death. Hal works as a low-level, cubicle-bound, white-collar worker in a large, scandal-ridden corporation. He was used as a scapegoat for much of the company's shady business practices, a charge that would have resulted in a lengthy prison term. However, with the help of Malcolm, Hal proved that he could not possibly be the guilty party because all of the incriminating evidence against him took place on Fridays, and Hal presented inarguable proof that he had been skipping work on Fridays for many years. Though this cleared him of any wrong doing, Lois, having snapped out of being mentally unstable, yells at Hal for skipping work on Fridays. He stated in the sixth-season episode Motivational Seminar that he works in systems management. In another episode, Hal's company head stated that Hal was one of the best systems managers he ever had, however, in the seventh-season episode College Recruiters (2), Hal says he could be replaced at his job in an hour. Hal gives each of the boys "One free pass". He does so when they do something so horrible that he can't tell Lois about it. They don't get to choose when to use it, Hal decides by how bad it is, and how Lois would punish them if she found out. Each of the boys used their pass at a fairly young age. In a flashback, Hal remembers all the times he gave them their "One free pass". Francis used his when he got handcuffed to a pole at a strip club, trying to get his money back from the stripper. Reese's was when he strapped roller skates to a horse and accidentally killed it in the driveway. Malcolm mixed the wrong chemicals in his chemistry set and blew/burned his and Hal's hair off leaving their scalps red, with some smoke trailing off. Hal caught Dewey smoking some of his ten year old hidden cigarettes, which he had hidden all over the house, but had since forgotten. When he caught Dewey he had already become addicted to them, to the point of going into the "crawl space" under the house to find more (as stated before Hal hid them all over the place). However, Lois found out and Hal had to find all of his hidden cigarettes. Malcolm said, "Mom made Dad get rid of all of his old cigarettes, and said she would make him eat any she found, so he's pretty motivated," just as Hal opened an air vent, letting a huge pile of cigarettes come falling out. He claimed that he hid all his cigarettes in the house to get over his addiction by just knowing they were there. Dewey mentions that there were thousands of cigarettes hidden all over the house and the money Hal spent on them would have been enough to send him to private school. Trivia *He has maimouphobia (fear of monkeys), revealed in Dewey's Opera. Category:Characters